


Monachopsis

by TheSoulOfAStrawberry



Category: Adventure Time
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst, Armless Finn, Depression, Gen, Hospitals, Implied/Referenced Suicide, London!!, Multiverse, unreality
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2016-01-05
Updated: 2016-05-12
Packaged: 2018-05-11 22:12:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 9
Words: 21,196
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5643736
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheSoulOfAStrawberry/pseuds/TheSoulOfAStrawberry
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Is Ooo just the fevered dreams of a lost teenager? Finn's pretty sure it was- or is- real, but suddenly he's living some part messed-up, part strangely great life that both is and isn't his. Maybe he'd be satisfied with this world inhabited by so many people like him, but at the end of the day, he just wants to find his friends and go home- if home isn't somewhere he dreamed up in a coma.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Impending and Crushing Existential Angst

**Author's Note:**

> ????? This was an idea based on those same-old same-old "finn is some tragic kid in a coma!!" AUs only with a messed-up sense of reality after and also??? Finn's got some issues, poor kid. 
> 
> Also, it's just him, for a while. The plot turned out like that.
> 
> The title (folk-metaphysics) is also a song by Milo! It's good, go listen, until I change the title bc I think of something decent. 
> 
> EDIT: now changed to a weird obscure word i liked, but still listen to the song bc it's good!

When Finn awoke, a lot of things were missing.

The first thing he noticed was that his hat was gone. He’d got used to having slightly squished ear and always being a little warm- it was something of a comfort blanket; after all, humans didn’t need to blend into their landscape anymore. He supposed it also did a pretty neat job of keeping all his hair off his face: but there was that too, he had less hair than he last remembered having. It’d been down to his thighs, and now it barely reached the stub of his right arm.

That was the second thing. His arm was gone, again, only this time there was a dull pain left in its place. And, this time, there wasn’t even a little white flower on the end to keep him company. Where had the grass arm gone? That wizard had said it was a lifelong curse- surely lifelong curses couldn’t up and leave, could they? Maybe Jake knew.

And that was the third thing. Jake. Where was he? He couldn’t remember. Where had they been last? The light was too harsh, it made Finn squint and his head hurt until all he could think about was rolling back over and revelling in the sweaty darkness of the pillow beneath his hatless head. 

Except he couldn’t, as there was one thing that was one thing that was very much not lacking in this hospital cubicle, eyes, watching him attentively as if he might conk out at any minute. He blinked at each set in turn, partially to clear the gunk from his eyes, partially because the bright light was essentially blinding him and partially as a roundabout way of communication- a bit like running water when someone needed the toilet, or yawning in front of someone- he wanted to see them blink too. 

They didn’t, so he went back to sleep.

\---

The second time he awoke, it was because he was filled with a sense of urgency as well as that same sense of loss. His heart was racing but he wasn’t moving- he couldn’t move, or at least not very quickly. Was he late for something? There was no alarm going off, just an indecipherable murmur and his own raging heartbeat clouding his ears and making it ever so impossible to remember anything at all. 

This time there are only two pairs of eyes. One’s clearly a doctor. Or was she? It’s easy to dress up like a doctor, Finn thought. She could be a magic user, but unless he and Jake had really strayed far from home, he would be under Princess Bubblegum’s jurisdiction right now, and she would allow no such thing. He paid his taxes, she hired someone licensed to give medical care. Unless he hadn’t paid his taxes?

The other one had long blonde hair like him. It was better looked after than his, but then, he bet she’d been the one to take his hat away to prove this fact. How mean. He could get his cut if he cared, plus it looked way better when he’d had a wash. How long had it been since he’d washed? He had the sense that he’d been asleep quite a while- he had one of those headaches he got when Jake was away and he didn’t do much besides sleep late and make interesting sandwiches.

It was only then he noticed they weren’t looking at him, but something just to the right of his head. Good, he supposed, it wasn’t urgent at all. He wasn’t needed.

\---

The third time, he felt he was needed in a very deep, psychological sense, as someone was stroking his hair very delicately and he had a need to thank them, and to ask if they knew where his hat was. It did feel nice having his hair stroked, but he’d much prefer not having his hair anywhere near people’s hands and under his hat. 

Except it was blonde hair and eyes again, close this time, stroking his hair oh-so-softly. It was like when Jake brushed it (he only did it in exchange for a backscratch, and because BMO told him to) only softer and with less yelling about tangles. In fact, she was whispering. What was she saying?

He adjusted a bit so his ear wasn’t being swallowed into the pillow, and then frowned as he remembered his arm was missing and therefore could only be used to push himself up with great difficulty and again, more pain. 

“Finn! Go easy, there’s no rush,” the one with the blonde hair insisted, stopping stroking his hair and allowed him to put that horrible stubby arm in her hand to help him sit-up against the pillow.

It was then that all the loss came back to him, as the blood rushed into his brain from the sudden exertion. He was entirely alone in a brightly-lit room with the murmur of conversation and muffled telephones coming from outside the dull turquoise curtain encasing him with the blonde woman and the doctor, these two strangers who were looking at him as if they knew who he was and why he was looking so utterly terrified. 

“Here, Finn,” the blonde one said, offering him water in a flimsy white cup. He went to take it with his right hand, given the left one was still keeping him propped up somewhat, before seeing he didn’t have a right hand and acquiescing to sink lower into the pillow to quench his dry throat. It felt minorly better, but his head was still pounding and his mind was still cloudy and he still had a feeling of emptiness in the pit of his stomach and of course, his arm still hurt.

“How are you feeling, Finn?” the doctor asked. 

Finn thought about asking her if he could see Jake now, but he couldn’t manage more than just answering her question with the simplest, monosyllable answer: 

“Sore.”

“I’m afraid that will be the case for a while, but we’ll get you sorted out with some medicine before mum takes you home, don’t worry,” she smiled, and Finn was so overwhelmed by that sentence that he didn’t even know where to start asking questions, let alone compressing each question into short, monosyllabic sentences. Yet, he didn’t get a chance to chew on it, as she continued, “I know losing a limb is difficult but you mother tells me you’re a very talented boy and you’ve got plenty of support to get you back on track. These days we can 3D print mechanical prosthesis quiet easily so once you’ve had a little time at home we’ll have you come back here to get fitted for one, easy peasy.” She smiled then, which did put Finn at ease a little- in between the bits that inferred he was going up with the hair-stroking stranger, a high-tech prosthesis might make it a little easier this time, even if it wasn’t quite up to the level of cursed grass.

“We have a few more tests to do before you can go, but in the meantime, are you hungry?” 

He wanted answers more than food but then he was hungry, he couldn’t deny it, so he nodded.

“There’s a canteen downstairs, isn’t there? Can we just go there?” the blonde one asked.

“If Finn’s OK with walking down there, then sure, but please be back by two so we can conduct the tests,” the doctor said, and smiled once again, and Finn nodded, almost like clockwork, before he could work out what was going on. She came over to remove some tubes from the little bandage thing on his good arm, then, with only a wiggle of her fingers, she disappeared out the curtains and became one with the murmuring voices and muffled telephones, leaving him and the blonde one alone. 

“Let’s get you some food, shall we?” she stood up, and it was then that Finn noticed she was pregnant- not heavily, he didn’t think, but noticeable. For a moment, he glimpsed hope and wondered if that was why the doctor kept referring to her as “mum”, but she dashed this idea into the dirt by widening her eyes and going “oh!” as she noticed him staring.

“You don’t know! Of course. Finn, you’re going to be a big brother!”

“Mum!” he exclaimed, too quickly. She took it to be a good thing because she kissed his forehead, but really it was him being slapped across the face with the realisation that he suddenly had a mother (as well as a little sibling) and even though she was really nice and stuff, she seemed to know about him and yet he knew nothing about her. Was he asleep that long? He had a feeling there was more to it. 

“Here,” she said, “I brought some clothes; do you want some help getting changed?” She was looking at where his arm wasn’t, and Finn hadn’t realised he was self-conscious about it but he really wanted her to stop looking. She had no right.

“No,” he said. “I’m fine. I’ve done it before.” It hadn’t even been that long ago, since he’d been 16 last time it happened and was still, depending on how long he’d been asleep, probably 16. His mum only laughed, as if she didn’t believe him, and pulled the curtain back behind her.

He wasn’t fine, of course. The moment the stranger was gone, panic set itself deep in his stomach and he clasped his head with the only available hand, running his fingers down through his greasy hair. 

“You’ve got this dude,” he told himself croakily, and normally, normally he did, but not this time. Reality had changed around him, right? Was it his fault? His mum was great, everything he’d ever wanted, and the doctor, she’d been a human too- he’d wanted that too, other humans like him. 

He exhaled. It was supposed to be a long, slow breath, but it came out more like small pants as he struggled with the thoughts whirling around in his mind. Not to mention, of course, his throat hurt.

The clothes he’d been given were slightly too big for him, but then he’d definitely lost a substantial amount of weight, however long he’d been in hospital. Side-remarks from Joshua and some bad guys here and there had made him a little more than self-conscious about being chubby in the past, but now he wouldn’t have minded feeling a little more at home in his own body, since home in the outside world was nowhere to be found. They also weren’t his- except they were his, in this reality- only Finn Mertens, the adventurer from Ooo, did not wear jeans- they were hard to move in and even harder to do up with only one hand.

Once he was finished dressing, he sat back down on the bed, finding he needed to catch his breath, and decided to formulate a plan- that’s what he do with Jake if he was here. He’d have to start by finding out how he’d got here, which could be found out simply enough, he guessed, from his mum and then… He supposed he could fish to the whereabouts of Jake too, couldn’t he? 

Wait, he thought. Unless this was a dream? Then all he needed to do was think about something really hard to wish it true- so wished his arm back. Except there it was, still staring back at him, that little stub. 

Not a dream, then.

“Finn, are you OK in there?” his mother called through, and the urge to burst into tears swept through Finn in a frisson of sadness. He resisted, of course- he didn’t cry in front of anyone but Jake (and, he supposed, sometimes PB) and no matter how confused he was or how much pain he was in, this situation wasn’t at all near bad enough to break that rule.

“Yup,” he said, and pulled back the curtain. His mum looked him up and down and smiled, which he had to say, did make him feel better, until suddenly she frowned at his arm, and that pang of indignation came right back, sitting uncomfortably in his throat.

“Finn, be more careful, you’ve reopened the wound,” she said sternly, picking his arm up and touching something just over the other side of his arm tenderly. He nearly screamed at the pain that shot through the end of his arm, and he guessed his mum saw this, and the fact that the side of his vision started to cloud, because the next thing he knew he was sat back on the bed and a lady in blue was doing something with a packet of bandages. She used the word “careful” over and over until it didn’t sound very real anymore. He craned over to see what she was doing, and was incredibly put out to find the process of having his arm lost was not at all as clean as the previous time- there was a scar running across the other side of his arm about the length of his index finger, maybe a few weeks young, tinged with both dry and, where the nurse was tending, fresh blood.

Where was Jake when he needed him?


	2. Unreality and Panic

When they finally made it down to the canteen for some food, Finn’s mum made him sit down at a table rather than come with her to choose what he wanted. Under normal circumstances he would have insisted coming with her, since he both wanted to help and didn’t trust her judgement on knowing what he liked, no matter how much she was supposedly his mother, but he didn’t suppose he’d be much help with only one arm and the potential to faint at any second.

He’d some to the conclusion he was not in the Candy Kingdom. Sure, the lack of candy people in his ward and the fact the doctors were human should have told him that easily, but he couldn’t help but stare as they’d made their way down the stairs and through a long hall decorated with extravagant murals. Everyone he passed was human. In any other situation, he might have been elated, but maybe this isn’t what he’d always wanted after all. Like when he and Jake had discovered all those people underground who’d turned out to be half-fish, he hadn’t been disappointed, it was more a sense that he’d reached a dead-end. Perhaps what he’d always been searching for was the thrill of an adventure that was a little bit different because it could tell him something very conclusive about himself and his past. This wasn’t that- this was a totally new reality, with, as far as he could gather, none of the previous rules of existence in place. This wasn’t going to tell him anything about himself. Or maybe it would, but not the things he'd been wanting to know.

He slouched in his seat and fiddled with his gross hair, wondering if the gnawing melancholy in the pit of his stomach was worse than last time or not. As he thought, he knocked his bad arm carelessly on the side of the table and sharp, hot pain shot through it. He wanted to curse, but bit his lip instead, not knowing where to start. 

He had no outlet of revenge for it this time, which could either be a good thing or a bad thing- that said, he didn’t know what happened to his arm this time, so maybe he was yet to find out. A large part of him didn’t want to know.

He was still mulling this over, lost deep in his own mind, when a plate of sandwiches appeared in front of him, along with an oversized bottle of water. He jumped a little at the slight clatter the plate made on the table and immediately stopped slouching, smiling up at his mother a little too fakely.

“It’s OK Finn,” she sighed, “You’re allowed to be a little down sometimes.” 

It’s natural, Jake had said. PB hadn’t seen eye-to-eye though, so he wondered if this was right.

“I’m good,” Finn replied, not particularly believing himself let alone convincing his mother, but she didn’t say anything, only pushed the sandwiches closer towards him. He thanked her and dug in gratefully: if there was one thing he was sure of, it was that he was starving.

“Mum,” he started, after the initial hunger had been satisfied with the first sandwich, “Have you seen my hat?”

“Your hat?”

Finn frowned. “Yeah, yknow, has ears ‘n’ junk, white. Hat.”

“I don’t remember any hat, Finn.” 

Weird, Finn thought. “But… My hat…” he wasn’t sure where else to go with this line of questioning. He sighed, and took another bite of his sandwich.

“You looking forward to going home?”

“Uhuh.” Finn both loathed and was appealed by the idea- he didn’t suppose she was talking about the treehouse, but then again it was an opportunity to leave this hospital and find out a little more about what his life has suddenly turned into.

“You don’t sound too sure about that.” She’d stopped eating and was now just watching him, making him somewhat self-conscious. She had a gaze where he couldn’t quite tell if she’d sussed him out or not.

Finn decided to be honest, just to be on the safe side. “I’m not, I don’t think.”

“It’s been a while, I guess.”

“Wait,” he said, “Hold up. How long have I been here? How long was I asleep? What even happened?” 

She blinked at him incredulously. “Finn, even for the want of not sounding clichéd here; you mean you don’t remember?” He shook his head in a noncommittal way, considering playing it off as a joke, only he still couldn’t work out what she was thinking and also definitely wanted to know the answer to the first bit. She looked worried, and he couldn’t help but not care- not that he wasn’t invested in her wellbeing, he just couldn’t push himself to. No matter what way he looked at it, she didn’t seem real.

“You’ve been in and out of consciousness a lot over the last few months so I thought you would but… Well, you did talk a load of crap, Finn, so maybe you weren’t all there-”

“What kind of… crap?” he interrupted. He had a bad feeling about what she was about to say, and everything seemed to hush around him as she opened her mouth to speak.

“I don’t know Finn, random stuff, princesses and vampires and things. And a lot of kinds of candy; I figured you missed it so I got you some sent over from Uncle McCooil in California, it’s at hom-”

“That wasn’t random stuff,” he squeaked, “Those were- are- my friends, glob it,” he said, throwing his arms into the air. “They’re not “random stuff”, no way in history. What about Jake, too? What about him?” He was standing up now. The look on this woman’s face said he was scaring her but he didn’t care, he was confused and hurt and now he was angry too. 

“What about him Finn?” she asked, putting her hands up in a way that both seemed to want to calm him and defend herself, “Sit down, please!”

“What happened to Jake?” he repeated, and his voice came out sounding shrill and louder than intended, so much so that anyone in the canteen who wasn’t already looking their way sure was now.

“Finn Merriweather, sit the hell down!”

“That’s not even my name!” He was definitely yelling now, panic mode on full. He looked around- there was what he supposed was some kind of security coming towards him on his right side, and the woman who still claimed to be his mother was still stood over the table, seemingly conflicted over whether to pursue him as he backed away.

“You are, Finn, that’s you!” his mother yelled, as if that was the issue. Finn was considering whether to fight or not, but he had no back-up, no plan of escape and no idea what to do after a plan of escape, plus of course there was his arm, which was definitely not in shape to fight with, let alone go on the run with. He suddenly regretted flipping out so much, yet there was no way he could stop himself being utterly terrified with the whole idea of his reality in that moment, so persisted.

“My name’s Finn Mertens! Glob, how can you not know that!” he argued, and to Finn’s surprise, she looked as if she’d hit a rut. Or was that it, or was she thinking something else? 

“Finn, you’re confused. Please, listen, the only Jake I can think of was the dog we had when you were a kid, but he died when you were twelve I think? Sit down honey,” she pleaded, “I get that everything’s a bit confusing and difficult at the moment but it’s hard for me too, so… come on…” she beckoned him to sit down, smiling, knowing the the moment she’d caught him off guard that he’d surrendered- he only realised after it happened that he’d already lowered his arms and that the security guard wasn’t advancing anymore.

Perhaps he was minorly distracted by the sensation that his mind had just run into a brick wall.

The next thing he knew, however, he was sat down, and he was crying. It felt like a long time since he’d cried, and even longer since he’d done it in front of anyone, but if Jake was gone what did it matter? There were hands on his shoulders as he sobbed, hair falling over his face like a little curtain between him and the world- only it was so lonely inside his own head now, there was something missing. Even as he cried, he realised that after a few moments, the sadness waned and there was again that sense of numbness in the bottom of his stomach, like it was a stopper on all other emotions. In a way, he wished he’d been able to cry longer, to feel sadder, because not being able to seemed like only more weight on his shoulders on top of the disappearance of Jake.


	3. The Sickening Void of a Gap in Understanding

Finn was glad of being out of the hospital, and he was even gladder of the fall of night. Everything out the window in the ward had been cold and grey- under the cover of night he couldn’t see that, it was only a blur of car lights and streetlamps. Man, he’d never seen so many cars in his life- so many different sizes, with not enough space for all of them as they queued in all different directions while him and his mum manoeuvred through them. Her car was little, at least half the size of the truck they’d fixed with Banana Man, and, of course, exponentially more boring. He considered telling his mum about that time, to make conversation, since it’d been sort of silent and somewhat icy since they waved goodbye to the doctors, but maybe since his outburst, she might think him a little mad. He wasn’t the same person in this reality.

He was sat in the passenger seat, staring out a rain-swept and fogged-up screen. The moment his mum had gotten in the driver’s side and turned on the engine, and the little light above the gearstick had gone off, he relaxed from sitting upright and leant over to rest his head on the window.

He’d apologised earlier, since it only seemed like the right thing to do, but his mum was still not talking. It wasn’t a heavy silence though, more like a thoughtful one. She’d told the doctors about his mind being messed up when she thought he was preoccupied, but from what he could gather, they’d pooh-poohed the idea, which Finn guessed was good. They gave her some medicine instead-two boxes, both different- and a repeat prescription. 

Finn sighed. They’d only just made it out onto the road, and still, the number of cars didn’t wane, only became more expansive as they pulled out into motorway traffic and all he could see for miles were red and white lights, a long queue of them.

It was if everything in Ooo was just a dream now. This reality was so much colder and greyer and lonelier.

He wanted to cry again.

As if reflective of his own emotions, his mum sighed, only when he looked over he saw her staring dejectedly at the traffic stretching ahead of them. Finn set his head back on the window pane but his mother had seen him looking and coughed to get his attention again.

“Finn… About what you said back at the hospital…”

“I’m still mad sorry, I shouldn’t have flipped out all crazy like that, I know,” he cut in, but it didn’t seem to change the angle she was going for.

“No, not that. I mean, it’s OK, you scared me but I get that you’re… See that’s the thing, Finn, are you confused?”

“Um… Yeah, a lot, I guess,” he replied. There was no other way about it.

“Why do you think your name is Finn Martins?”

“Mertens.”

“Fine then, M… Mertens,” she huffed. There was a pause, before Finn realised he was supposed to answer.

“I… dunno, because it is.”

“But you’re my son and your name is Merriweather. And how can we agree you’re still called Finnick?”

“I’m not called Finnick,” Finn said, probably far too quickly, “It’s always been just Finn. I ain’t heard of any cats called Finnick until just now.” 

“So who do you think you are then?” She was staring straight ahead so he couldn’t tell if she was crying.

“Finn Mertens. I mean…” he tried to correct himself, given how blunt it sounded. He didn’t want to tell her he had no idea who she was but it was already so hard to fake it- maybe she could at least explain things to him if she knew he wasn’t potentially who she thought he was.

But, it turned out, she was already thinking along the same lines.

“Finn… Do you know who I am?”

“N-No.”

There was a long pause. He could almost hear her heart breaking, and he felt terrible for it.

“B-But, I mean, um, you’re great! I mean, I… I mean, um, Finn Mertens, the original me, as opposed to whoever I am now, doesn’t have a mum so you’re really great in that way because I’ve never had someone like you and my dad was a giant dillweed-”

His mum chuckled. “Well at least we agree on that,” she said dryly.

“His name was Martin and he has a big beard and he was a kinda bad guy, I mean like bad news kind, I dunno if it made him a bad person or whatever.”

“No, your dad’s name is Kevin.”

Finn shut his mouth for a few seconds, before deciding to ask, “So, wait, you’re not still with Kevin are you? I mean…” he didn’t know how to put it but she knew he was looking at her pregnant stomach.

“No Finn… You have a stepdad, his name is Guoting and if we ever get home then I want you to not let on to him that you’re… Well, that you don’t remember anything.”

He appreciated that she realised how much of his memory was missing but her tone still said that he wasn’t to be trusted, even though, of course, he wasn’t lying- though technically, there was no proving the existence of Ooo or even his name, at least not yet. 

“Just so you know, Finn, you’re wrong. You are my son,” his mum was staring straight ahead, misty-eyed, the blue of her eyes lost in the red light from the line of brake lights in front. “It’s understandable that you’ve forgotten things and-”

“How could I have forgotten my whole life?” he asked, and she just stopped for a moment before continuing.

“It’s understandable that you would have forgotten things. You were in the hospital for a good while.”

“...A good while?” he asked. That sounded ominous. He hadn’t been asleep all that long, had he? Come to think of it, he couldn’t even remember where he was or what he was doing when he went to sleep in the first place. Maybe it was because he’d woken up so many times- like when you take a nap in the day and the day gets split into two and becomes confusing, only much worse, and paired with the feeling of his head being stuffed with cotton wool and that numbing sense of emptiness in his stomach.

“About seven months,” she seemed somewhat satisfied by his disbelief, as if her argument of reality having shaken him somehow meant she was winning. 

There was a moment of silence, in which the growl of the engine seemed to fill Finn’s ears and saturate his mind with a slow, senseless buzz, and he felt his grip of reality becoming confused. Or maybe he was feeling faint, he couldn’t tell.

“Finn,” her voice, now all too familiar and yet still she remained someone about whom he knew so little, whatever this situation he was in having thrown them together in a situation set-up for some kind of domestic bliss, arm notwithstanding, “You don’t know how you got there or how you lost your arm, do you?”

“Last time it got pulled off, I don’t really understand how and I prefer not to remember. Messed-up junk. But it’s more painful this time,” he muttered, “I guess I don’t want to know again, especially if it managed to put me out of whack for… that long,” he tailed off, not wanting to think about the seven plus missing months of his life. 

“I’m going to tell you anyway, but before I do, how do you feel?”

“Um,” he thought for a moment. It hadn’t been that long since he’d last been asked the same question, but it was still hard to put it into words every time. “Confused, I guess, still sore. Kind of empty too, and like all existence and stuff is being mixed up in my head and I’m not sure who I am or what I should be feeling. I… I dunno,” he finished. The cars ahead started to move, but not by much, just inching along the road- what could have been the only road in the universe for all Finn knew, since everything outside their pool of lights was just an inky blackness now.

“That’s… OK. We will manage.” Again, a pause. Finn wondered if she was adding them on purpose to keep him on edge- she was comfortable to be around, sure, but often he got the sense she wasn’t letting everything on, including when he did something wrong. In fact, he wasn’t sure he’d ever been more paranoid he was saying the wrong thing than he was around her- maybe this was what it was like to have a mother.

Then she let out a long, laboured sigh, and Finn knew something was coming.

“You got hit by a train. I mean… You jumped in front of a train. You nearly didn’t make it at all but you fell in between the tracks instead of onto them- except your arm- and so came out bruised and with an amputated arm, but alive. I think they kept you sedated for so long because they were worried about your state of mind more than anything, but then there was no indication of anything being wrong and I kept thinking about how once you got the chance to start over everything could change and being asleep in a hospital wasn’t going to change that. I think we overruled what the doctors wanted actually,” she coughed, “But. You seem more… chipper than you were. Do you remember now? We got some medicine and you can change schools if you want, it’s OK, we’ll work it all out.”

Finn wasn’t sure how many more surprises he could take. It took a while to compute this- trying to contextualise his existence right in that moment. How was he supposed to feel, to act? That was a lot to lay on his mother, even though he had nothing to do with it. Was it better to pretend he did, since it was obviously eating away at her? He wasn’t sure he could even understand why he- or former him, or Finn Merriweather, since that could be a different person- would even do that. 

“I’m…” He sighed. He didn’t know how to put it, where to even start. “See,” he tried again, “That stuff, that’s not me. I don’t wanna jump in front of a train. I’m not saying all that stuff didn’t happen and I’m sorry you had to endure all that biz but… I dunno man, I’d never do that. At least I don’t think I’d ever do that.”

“Finn, they asked you that back at the hospital, didn’t they? They gave you a quiz on how you felt.”

“Oh yeah,” Finn remembered. The doctor who’d done it was going to give him a pen and the sheet of paper and didn’t notice until he’d set them down in front of Finn on the little bed-table that Finn would have problems using a pen. Finn could only grin sheepishly as the doctor corrected his mistake with a little cough and a sideways glance.

“That was a test to work out your state of mind. So they knew you didn’t want to… y’know… anymore, or they wouldn’t have let us go. But Finn, you’re still depressed. How do you explain that if you’re not the same Finnick Merriweather?”

That was unexpected. He wasn’t depressed- just having a hard ride at the moment.

“Anyone’d be depressed if they woke up in some parallel universe with their arm torn off,” he pointed out, probably sounding a little whiny, but he didn’t care. “I’m not Finnick but maybe if you tried to believe me I could help you find him. Where I’m from, that’s what I do- help people, fight bad guys ‘n’ stuff. I could totally do it if you just thought about what I’m saying-”

“Finn,” his mum sighed, “Are you even listening to yourself? You fight bad guys? You’re in some fantasy world- I told you, you were asleep for seven months, maybe you dreamt all this, don’t you think? I’m not going to try to believe you when there’s nothing to believe- like you said, you’re confused, you just need to let your head sort itself out and come back to the real world.”

She sounded annoyed now, so he dropped it for the moment, pouting and sliding down in his seat. What she was trying to say irked him, and as he thought about it, he realised when he thought about it, it wasn’t that what she was saying was unreasonable- in fact the opposite. Underneath the fact he knew Ooo was real and that he’d lived there his whole life, when the two stories were pitted together, his version of events did sound totally wack. And then even though the quiz at the hospital could be easily justified, something Doctor Princess said about bouncing back nagged in the back of his mind. Either way, test or no test, if he had the memories from Ooo, and looked pretty much the same, then he had to be the same person- and yet his newfound mother was saying he wasn’t Finn Mertens and that he had dreamt up his whole life in Ooo. Maybe he didn’t know his own mind. How could you know if the cogs of your own mind were busted if you’re the one inhabiting that same mind? Brains weren’t even the kind of hardware like clockwork where you could check what was wrong, or even software like BMO, where Jake had had to run a diagnostic programme on BMO when they were glitching one time. It was all just mush. Sentient mush.

He realised his mind had wandered a little, being brought inevitably back to reality in that little car in the middle of a pitch black night by that feeling of impending doom that he had a feeling he was just going to have to live with for a little while, while he got his bearings. Forget software fixes- he had to work out where he was first, and what his old life was in relation to this one, before he could start fixing anything.

His eyelids fluttered involuntarily.

Was it so bad for his mind to wander if, for now, he couldn’t fix anything?


	4. A Creeping Sense of Dépaysement

He dreamt about Ooo. He couldn’t remember what he dreamt, only that when he woke up, he hated himself for having dreamt of it- not least because it made him sorely miss Jake and Princess Bubblegum and Marceline and BMO, but also because he felt his grip on what was real get a little more muddled than it already was.

It was still dark out, and they were still driving, but they’d clearly moved, as now there were more streetlamps and if he looked out across the road, he could see rows of lights in buildings- tall buildings, taller than even the Candy Kingdom’s highest tower. He straightened up in his seat to get a better look out the window and in doing so, alerted his mother to the fact he was awake.

She gave a little cough. “We’re just coming into London now, so nearly home,” she said, and sounded like she’d calmed down a little, her voice less strained.

Indeed, they travelled far quicker than they had been when they were stuck in the row of cars, and took more turns than before. The newfound sense of direction put Finn on edge. He remembered that wherever he was going, this man Guoting would be there, and he would have to fake his knowledge of his entire life with his mother to please this man, for some reason. 

He still hated not wearing his hat.

“Nearly”, Finn found, was the operative word. It seemed like an eternity before they pulled into a narrow street lined with dirty looking houses with idiosyncratic balconies and adornments. The only thing he could compare it to was his parents’- that was, Joshua and Margaret- old house in the city, where he and Jake had been once looking for… what was it? He couldn’t remember. The houses were bigger there though, and more abandoned. This place wasn’t abandoned at all- there was a woman sat on the steps to one of the buildings clutching a bowl of something hot as they pulled into the side of the road and his mum turned off the engine with a shudder. Finn expected her to brief him, but since she didn’t believe he’d forgotten everything, she didn’t.

“Home,” was all she said, with a small smile into the wing mirror, and Finn’s heart jumped into his throat. He wasn’t ready for this.

They went up the same stairs the woman was sat on. She wasn’t eating whatever was in the bowl, just blowing on it to cool it down. It smelled nice, like a mixture of spices and meat Finn had never tried before, and he considered telling her this much, but his mum being around made him nervous. Instead, when he passed her on the stairs, he smiled awkwardly, hoping to get the message across through his tired eyes and weak expression. She looked at his missing arm, and then at him, puzzled, and just before he looked away out of embarrassment, smiled back.

The houses weren’t houses, they were apartments. The hallway was painted white but lit in a putrid yellow, and the staircase had a rotten bar running up the wall but none on the other side, meaning, he guessed, you could just fall off, kind of like creepy old stairway that went round the side of cliff faces and ended in a cave where you had to fight a troll or a dragon. Only, of course, he couldn’t hold Jake’s hand nor the rail like he had that one time in the Badlands, because he had neither Jake nor a right arm.

It had never been this hard to climb a staircase. Every new step was not only nerve-wracking, his holdall banging against the back of his shaky legs, but brought with it a renewed sense of dread about what was to come when they reached “home”, as well as a sense of loneliness that, whatever was there, it wouldn’t be Jake and BMO and his bed and their freezer that was, if he remembered right, currently full of blueberries. 

They stopped on the second floor and his mum fumbled with the keys for a moment before opening the door into a surprisingly brightly lit and cosy corridor. She stood aside and beckoned Finn to go through first.

The corridor was short and ended, as far as Finn could see, with a tiny but clean kitchen. The corridor had on it four doors, and his mum pointed at one.

“Dump your stuff in your room, Finn. Are you hungry?”

“Um… Yeah, please,” he said, still a little dumbstruck by how nice, if not compact, the flat was. He opened the door into what had been indicated as his room quickly, knowing his mother was waiting to get past him.

He wasn’t sure what he’d expected. He switched the light on, and was met by another little room, partially inhabited with boxes, but also clearly inhabited, at some point, by someone who both was and wasn’t him. It clearly wasn’t his room, but also it didn’t look like somewhere that wouldn’t fit him- there was a stack of comics at the foot at the bed but he didn’t recognise any of the titles; it was cluttered but not messy, he wasn’t a messy person, but none of it was him- there were paintbrushes, he noticed, and art materials, dotted here and there. On the third set of pencils he spotted, he wanted to laugh, or cry, he wasn’t sure which, but he decided with just throwing the holdall onto the bed- again, not at all his bed, but purple tartan bedcovers and a stuffed horse weren’t bad either- and plunging the room back into darkness.

He’d get to know Finnick Merriweather later.

He slipped his shoes of and put them by the door, before realising his were the only ones there and moving them, figuring he didn’t want to get busted on such a simple account as his shoes being left in the wrong place. He then padded towards the kitchen, where he could hear his mum clattering around with pots and pans.

He was surprised to find the kitchen was no just a kitchen, but over the side of one of the counters was a small living area, watched over by a giant window, which had dark, elegant drapes lazily pulled halfway across it. On the only sofa was a man who was dressed the same way Kim Kil Whan would dress if he were human- sharply, but with an air of worldy fatigue about him.

“Guoting, honey,” his mum said as he stepped through the doorway, and to Finn’s surprise, the man turned round and, upon seeing Finn, leapt from his seat to greet Finn with a hug.

“Finn! It’s been so long, I missed you buddy,” he almost yelled, and Finn was bowled over, both mentally and almost physically. Aside from the fact this hug was coming from a stranger he was going to have to spend the next however long getting to know, it was a good, strong hug, and Finn felt his spirits lift a little. This was better than Ooo, in a way- forgetting about Martin and just having this guy as his stand-in dad; that would be cool. He was very full-on though, even though he was clearly very tired; the moment the hug ended he was inspecting Finn. Hands on his shoulders, then pinching his cheeks, then, of course, lifting his arm up to inspect. 

“Finn, I’m sorry. They’re going to get you a prosthesis one done, right?”

“Yes,” his mum cut it, “They said they have a waiting list but he’s on it, we have to go for a fitting in a fortnight and after that it takes another week and a bit to be made.”

“Ok, that sounds good then, right?” he looked at Finn, and Finn smiled weakly. “I’ll miss your paintings Finn… I mean, I’m sure you’ll paint again, you’ve got the skills, you just need to learn how to pick up a brush again with your new prosthetic and you’ll be good to go right-“

“Guoting,” his mother interrupted sternly from the kitchen, “Go easy on him, he’s barely been awake a day.”

“It’s OK, m-mum,” Finn said, turning the word “mum” over a little too much on his tongue, and, wondering if Guoting had noticed, he quickly carried on, “Are prosthetics that good these days huh? That’s bezonkers." A the thought of prostheses, his mind breezed over the memory of all the arms the princesses of Ooo had made him, and even though he felt it should be an uncomfortable memory- one half-in, half-out of The Vault- he found his lips graced with a small smile.

“Bezonkers?” Guoting chuckled at his phrasing. “I dunno, I thought they were, you’ll find out I suppose. I feel like I should know but I don’t,” he laughed, and Finn laughed too, a little awkwardly, given he felt he ought to know more about this man. He liked Guoting, but he was very full on, and Finn had to resist the temptation to take a step back to retain his personal space.

“Now, how are you feeling Finn? We’re going to have to have a little sit down and think about you, huh? All three of us, talking it out, yes?”

Finn hated the sound of that. The serious but kindly look that had suddenly clouded Guoting’s face said he was talking about the fact Finn- or other Finn- had jumped in front of a train. He wondered how long he could put that off for.

“To be honest, I don’t remember much of all that junk, and I feel fine now, besides missing my arm and stuff y’know.”

“He is better,” continued his mum from the kitchen, “They wouldn’t have let him out otherwise. It’ll be hard getting used to the arm,” she disappeared behind the counter and reappeared with two plates, “-Oh, wait, do you want anything to eat Guoting?”

“No, it’s too late.”

“Ok. What was I saying? Oh, it’ll take time getting used to the arm Finn, but this time we really are going to talk things through and help you out. We thought about taking time off work but you might be going back to school soon if you want to get back into the swing of things so it seemed pointless, but we’re making sure at least one of us is here in the evenings and we’ll make an effort to do something as a family every weekend, how’s that sound?”

It sounded entirely foreign. And he hated the idea of school- it’d been ages since he’d gone. But it also sounded like these two strangers had gone to a lot of effort to make his life happier, and he could appreciate that for what it was.

“That sounds great,” Finn smiled, and that seemed to work, as the expectant faces of his mother and step-dad both lit up simultaneously. 

“Good, how here, sit down and eat this,” she said, and handed him a plate.


	5. A Deep Sense of Numbness and Clinical Depression

He expected to have been woken up in the morning but he wasn’t. In fact, he didn’t naturally wake up until very late- the clock said nearly three- which he supposed was fair, since he didn’t remember getting to bed any time before two in the morning. The room was pitch black, and he reached for his bedlight, only to remember it wasn’t there, he didn’t have one and this wasn’t his room. He supposed he should have guessed, since his bedroom with Jake never really got properly dark. Maybe that’s why he slept so long, he wondered.

His arm had bled a bit in the night and was a little sore because of it, but hadn’t bled onto the covers. He sighed, inspecting it in the gloom, before flopping it back down and immediately regretting it. He hissed with pain for a moment or two, and then considered leaving bed. He had to admit, leaving bed to live in a world without the people he knew and loved seemed pointless, but he felt grubby, sweating in the previous night’s clothes, old bandages and of course, his positively disgusting hair.

He rolled out of bed, stumbling for the curtains, which weren’t as far away as he thought they were. When he pulled them back, he peered down onto the street outside, part curious, part filled with dread. He had to admit, everything did seem a little nicer in daylight, though the woman on the steps was gone. He hoped he saw her again. He didn’t know why, he just liked her.

Then he took his chance to get a proper look at his room. The boxes, he concluded, was baby stuff- supposing he was round, he guessed he had the joy of sharing a room with the kid. Maybe that wouldn’t be so bad, he thought. He wasn’t sure. 

His wardrobe was a flimsy affair: a simple wooden frame covered in canvas material, lacking in any drawer for Jake to sleep in, had he been there. There were shelves down one side and a rail across the top, and he shuffled through the clothes, hoping to find himself something like what he normally wore, instead coming across what he only could assume was a school uniform and grimacing. School really sounded like the worst idea- he somewhat doubted it’d be one-on-one lessons with Princess Bubblegum, done in free spots on both of their schedules and normally based on what PB wanted him to know rather than any solid curriculum. And as for the painting- well, arm or no arm, he couldn’t paint. Plus, there were bound to be other children, and who knew who Finnick’s friends were, or if he had any at all? 

Finn wished he knew more about this other Finn. Mostly he wanted to understand why someone would do something like jump in front of a train. His parents were nice, his room was pretty neat and he had two arms and a talent with painting, apparently, so what could have been so bad? Maybe he really didn’t have friends. But then, Finn thought, in that moment, _he_ didn’t have friends, because he didn’t know if they were alive or where they were. 

He sat back down on the bed then, feeling lost in his own mind. He didn’t even know how to spell his new surname, let alone trying to get his friends back.

After a little while, sick of sitting under a cloud of doom, he got up and left the room, sneaking down the hallway. Alas, his efforts were in vain, as he soon asserted he was alone in the flat. There was a note on the side.

_Didn’t want to wake you, will be back about 6. Love you! Mum x_

Finn’s instinct was to smile, but it still struck a strange chord in his hear that someone should refer to themselves as his mum. He should be thankful, but he wasn’t. Did that make him spoilt, he wondered, that he couldn’t appreciate what he’d been given? Maybe this was all some elaborate test, he thought, and he was failing because he was betraying his truest desires. 

He felt a little self-conscious then, standing in such a foreign and clean kitchen, an unwashed teenager missing an arm and presumably a little bit of his sanity. What was he expected to do for three hours until his mother came home, he wondered? Or, well, what would Finnick do? 

He became aware of his resistance to touching anything- he could only imagine that carefully wiped worktop being flecked with his blood, even though his arm wasn’t bleeding at that moment. He didn’t belong there, and yet there he was stuck, overwhelmed and nervous.

And on his knees.

It only took a second of blacking out, a ringing in his ears and grey clouds of void enveloping his vision, for him to be brought down there.

“Woah,” he said aloud to the room. There wasn’t anyone to answer, or to ask if he was OK, and in that moment, he felt like that really would have made everything better. 

\---

Three hours dragged by: and really dragged by, not like when he and Jake were on an adventure and there was a long stretch of walking where nothing really happened and neither of them said anything, but afterwards, upon consideration, it hadn’t been that bad- this was different. He started by picking himself carefully and without any sense of urgency off the kitchen floor, before wondering if he could take a shower, hoping to clean himself up both physically and mentally. He didn’t rush in doing this, talking to himself as he worked out the taps in the bathroom and the numerous bottles lining the rim of the bathtub, some with labels in languages he didn’t recognise. He also had to avoid getting his right arm wet, which took a great deal of concentration and pain when hot water inevitably splashed on the stitches. Upon exiting the bathroom, he was more than disappointed to find he’d barely wasted away half an hour of his long three hours.

Finding something far looser to wear but still not really his style, he then decided his best bet was to explore his surroundings. He avoided his own bedroom, and his mother’s (once he had determined which of the doors along the corridor was hers) for different reasons entirely. The remaining door, he discovered, was a cupboard with a white metallic box and a number of small shelves of similar style to the wardrobe in his room, holding a few stacks of towels and sheets. Next he explored the kitchen, finding that, although fancy and clean, it was very small. He was glad to find he recognised many of the ingredients he found sooner or later. He thought about making something, given that he indeed hadn’t eaten, but when he considered the fact he wasn’t at all hungry and that he wasn’t sure he was comfortable cooking in this kitchen, versus the fact he probably should eat, his own apathy won over.

He wasn’t sure what time it was when he finally sat down on the sofa, but the weak winter sun streaming through the windows fell across his knees and onto his right shoulder, where his wet hair glistened against his slowly dampening tshirt. He really wished he had a hat- he wasn’t really sure what to do with his hair otherwise. He thought about braiding it, but he didn’t even need to reach for a single tendril of blonde before he remembered he couldn’t braid one-handed.

That was when the heavy feeling returned. For some reason, he felt he could identify it better now- it wasn’t really guilt for not appreciating his life enough, more of a self-loathing he’d never thought he’d find in himself. It didn’t make sense, and yet, it did, it made so much sense. 

He stared down at his arm, wondering how Finnick would have handled this. 

“I guess, if you were sad,” Finn said to himself, “Then you do weird junk. But I’m sad now, I guess, and I don’t feel like doing anything weird.”

No sooner had the words come out of his mouth did he realise he was wrong. He was sad, but he hadn’t always been sad, and he remembered what had started everything in the first place- he’d done something stupid and lost his arm. _He’d_ lost his arm, the first time round, not Finnick. He got his arm back of course, though it had never quite felt like his again, and here he was without it once more and it didn’t bother him- but what about Finnick? If Finn had never got his arm back, he’d sometimes wondered whether he would have lived life differently- or whether he would have even lived life at all, since even with his arm, he’d definitely given thought to becoming space dust with that comet. His reasoning then had been his friends- space always seemed like a lonely place, space lards and celestial sandwiches aside. 

“Who is Finnick?” he asked the room again. He wasn’t sure if he believed he was Finnick or not. He sure didn’t like being called Finnick, but then, his mum didn’t call him that anyway, so maybe he- or Finnick- had already made that clear. Finnick was Finn- literally- so where did Finn start? 

Finn imagined rescuing Finnick, tied up in a dungeon like a maiden in distress. He would look like him but not, in the same way he both was and wasn’t Finn- maybe his eyes would be slightly too close together, or his ears stuck out, or it was one of those times where his face looked different but he couldn’t put his finger on why. Finnick would still have his arm, he thought, and Finn would reunite him with his mother, proud in the knowledge of both having done a good thing and righted the world, and in the safeness of his own sanity. 

And then what? He was alone, he guessed. Finnick had a mother, just like ice Finn, and he was alone. Finnick would probably look at Finn’s missing arm with sorrow, but there wouldn’t be anything he could do- after all, Finn was the only Finn, so the only heroic one, not the one brought up in the suburbs of a city still densely populated with people like himself.

Finn lost his imagined scenario there, his train of thought distracted by the shadow of a bird cutting momentarily across the rectangle of light on the ground in front of him. He then stared at the square of light until his eyes hurt, and he closed them.

That was right, he thought, leaning back into the sofa cushion. He was the heroic Finn from Ooo, wasn’t he- so why did it feel so much like he was playing so easily into the role of Finnick? Daydreams of adventures and pledges to help his mother find her real son were one thing, but when it came down to it, he didn’t have a plan. He felt guilty for thinking that way, but then the weight of the task ahead of him weighed heavier than any sense of guilt ever had. 

Maybe, he thought, maybe Finnick had the good life. It was probably selfish, but if people were going to be so insistent that he was depressed and delusioned, not to mention the definite chronic pain in his stub of an arm, then maybe it wasn’t so bad to just sit this one out. After all, he would objectively be throwing away what seemed like a loving family and a life with other people like him.

Who was he kidding, Finn thought. Finn Mertens didn’t give up that easily.


	6. Psychological Entropy

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :0 the one and only tumblr user tropicoola did the prettiest piece of art based on this fic and I died tbh, please go look at it and appreciate their amazingness!!! ahhhh: http://tropicoola.tumblr.com/post/139294208300/all-of-you-should-go-check-out-eva-chis-amazing

He was awoken with a kiss on his forehead. 

“Jake?” he muttered. His lips and throat were dry and his neck was sore from being leant back so long. His arm was also sore- and, throwing his head forward and opening his eyes, as if awakening from a bad dream. Sure enough, he still wasn’t in Ooo. 

Looking down at his arm, he wasn’t sure he needed to be sleeping to have a bad dream.

“Jake again?” came a voice from behind him, and still bleary-eyed and light-headed, he swung round to see his mum clutching the straps of her bag as it rested on the counter.

“Hi mum,” he said somewhat apologetically, even though she looked far from angry.

“At least you’re up and showered. Have you been anywhere today? How are you feeling?”

He stood up, somehow feeling bad for being sat down, as well as getting a strange sense he was inconveniencing her. Running his fingers through his tangled hair nervously, he wondered if he’d been expected to do anything, and therefore what his answer should be. However, he guessed, there was no point lying since there’d be nothing to show for it.

“Um, I didn’t do anything,” he said, and laughed a little. Being nervous wasn’t him, he thought, as he felt a blush rising in his cheeks, but then he had only just woken up, so maybe it was excusable. 

“You probably should have gone out, but like I said, at least you’re washed and dressed. How do you feel?” she asked again.

“Fine, I guess.” He didn’t really feel anything, if he was honest. A little light-headed, his mind a little overloaded with brain static from having slept too long, and of course his arm hurt, but otherwise fine, just as he’d said. Except in that moment, his stomach gave an almighty growl and he couldn’t help but laugh, nervousness dispelling from his body. His mother laughed too.

“I’m starving too,” she smiled, and Finn blushed again, for a different reason this time. “How about you and me eat out tonight? It’s Tuesday so Guoting’s not back until late and we haven’t really got much in the fridge… Maybe I could give you a shopping list tomorrow,” she was thinking aloud, “Where do you want to go? Somewhere you can eat with one hand.” 

Finn flinched involuntarily.

\----

He regretted not having been out during the day, though he wasn’t sure what he would have done about unlocking the door when he came back, since he noticed there was a latch that automatically locked the door whenever someone left, as well as a bottom lock that could be locked from the outside. The sun had very much gone in, leaving yet another starless night behind. It was cold too, but that was refreshing, wiping away his fatigue and clearing out his mind of cobwebs and other assorted brain fuzz. His mother had gotten him to put a jumper on, which he liked, though he wasn’t sure what to do with the rest of the arm of the sweater- there was too much material to pull it back up his arm, and yet having it dangling seemed depressing. When he’d asked his mum, she scrunched her forehead up for a moment before delicately bending down and folding the cuff back, and then back again, and back again, until it was only a few centimetres over the stump of his arm. Neat as it was, the bulk of material was awkward, and he wasn’t sure whether to laugh or cry when he tried to put his coat on over the top of it, only to find his arm didn’t fit in the sleeve. His mum laughed, and so did he, but neither of their hearts were in it; it was just a way of appreciating the difficulty of it all without breaking down. Eventually, his mum unrolled the sleeve, got a pair of kitchen scissors and cut a messy line across the elbow of the sweater sleeve and rolling the remainder of the sleeve back into the previous position, only less spare fabric this time made it much less bulky. The leftover sleeve went in the bin, though not before his mum gave him a playful, half-hearted flick with it.

They walked in silence. The sleeve still was far from perfect and he could feel it slipping, but he didn’t say anything. If it had been an uncomfortable experience for him, who had done almost all of it before with Jake, then it must have been hard for his mum. He wondered if he should apologise, but he wasn’t sure what he’d be apologising for and if he was honest, the fact he suspected the silence was down to his mother choking back tears deterred him from saying anything that might push her over the edge.

It was only a few streets of houses until they reached what looked like a main street, lined with dimly lit eateries and other shops Finn wasn’t sure he entirely recognised. In fact, everything was a bit dim in this world, especially since his point of comparison was the Candy Kingdom. It was so much more cramped too, even more cramped than the bad area of town round the back of the Candy Tavern. Nothing was pink and lovely anymore- it was just grey, grey and more grey, cracked pavements, bad-smelling drains and smashed glass in the gutter playing some kind of lacklustre compromise to the fact there were no stars in the sky. 

“How about pizza?” his mum asked, “Can’t go wrong with pizza.”

“Oh yeah, neat,” Finn replied, trying to sound enthused when really all the thought of pizza made his do was think of Jake. He wondered if the pizza here would be as good as at Pizza Sassy’s. Somehow he doubted it, but maybe that was because he was so down on negative energy. He should try to be positive, he thought- after all, his mum was really trying for him.

The interior of the pizza joint had a weird familiarity to it that threw Finn off. It was like seeing his bedroom all over again- uncanny, both exactly how he’d subconsciously expected it to look and yet still not quite. That, and the cashier, who had one elbow on the bright red counter, looked straight at Finn and smiled with his eyes, as if they were long-lost lovers sitting down next to one another in a café and yearning for the good old days. Or maybe it was Finn’s imagination.

“Get the table by the window,” his mother instructed, and Finn obliged, even though there were only three tables and one other person there, who looked perfectly happy with his box of chips and takeaway hot drink. He sat down and removed his jacket. He probably should have looked at the menu but it wasn’t a few minutes before his mum sat down in front of him and smiled, so he guessed she had it sorted. In the meantime, he looked the fat drops of condensation on the window and the way they blurred the lights outside like a messy painting. It looked nicer like that, he thought. He wasn’t sure how he felt about living in the city- whether missing the grass and the wide open space was because he missed the Grasslands and their treehouse, or just because he missed nature in general. Probably the most depressing thing about it was how far the urban landscape stretched- if there’d been any doubt of him still possibly being in some unknown, secreted corner of Ooo where somehow humans still thrived, it was quashed by the fact he could look out over the shops and flats along the street and see a city that stretched as far as the eye could see.

“Just me and you, Finn,” his mother smiled, snapping him out of his considerations.

“Yup,” he concurred, and leant forward. “How was… Um…” he wasn’t sure what she did, so he went broad, “…Your day?”

“Nothing special,” she sighed, “Someone in HR is leaving so they brought cake, but that was pretty much the highlight of my day.”

Finn had no idea what “HR” was, but decided not to ask.

“You’re quieter than yesterday. Excitement of everything worn off?” 

“Huh, I dunno. I had a lot to think about y’know, I’m not really in the dumps or whatevs.” That was a lie to himself as much as it was to his mum.

“You’re not down? Are you sure? Because, Finn, y’know, the key to making sure what happened doesn’t happen again is being open with people. You’ve got to tell me if you’re down so we can talk it through, not bottle it up.”

“Well maybe a little, but that’s… That’s not the point,” he looked into the glass again, and noticed his reflection this time. “It’s not going to happen again because I didn’t do anything, all that jive wasn’t anything to do with me,” he said, gesturing to himself.

“You’re still beating that dead horse?”

“Woah, what dead horse?” Finn exclaimed, attracting attention from the stranger with the chips. Finn couldn’t help but notice out of the corner of his eye that once he’d attracted the stranger’s attention, it didn’t go away as quickly as normal- and even then, “normal” was his status as a royal hero and something of a celebrity, often caught up in misadventures and news stories.

“It’s a saying, Finn.”

Oh… right on,” he said, sounding unconvinced, though of course he had no choice but to accept whatever she told him.

“Look,” she sighed, “The school rang today, they’re eager to have you back as they believe you can still catch up if you come back sooner rather than later. Plus, you can catch up with some of your friends! Which reminds me, there are some cards for you when I remember back home. You’re a smart kid Finn, but I’m not going to force you to go back if you don’t think you’re ready. They suggested this Friday, so you have a day to settle into the routine before actually getting into the swing of the work.”

“I’m not smart,” Finn said, and he wasn’t being self-deprecating, just realistic. His mother didn’t take it that way though.

“Of course you are! You’ve got great grades, that’s not going to change just because…” she tailed off, presumably unsure how to best euphemise his attempted suicide and consequent coma. He snorted at the thought of it.

“I’m not smart,” Finn repeated, taking his opportunity, “Your guy Finnick is. I’m not that guy, still. Plus I’m kind of missing my favourite arm which I need for writing and junk.”

“You are though Finn. Trust me, I’m your mother. Maybe when you see your friends and your teachers again you’ll remember- it’s OK for your brain to be a little behind anyway, we’re not trying to push you when you’re only just back on your feet but the first step towards fixing a problem is admitting there is one, you understand? As for your arm, the school is funding you a laptop. It’ll be hard to get used to but I’m sure you’ll be fine.”

She made it sound so simple, and he resented that. However, he also found himself wondering if she was right after all- after all, the pizza shop was so familiar, why else was that? A part of him felt like that thick feeling in his brain was what was stopping him getting to the truth- and maybe, just maybe, the truth was that this was his life.

“If you still feel the same way about... who you are... when we go to fit your prosthesis, we’ll book an appointment with a psychiatrist or something to work things out; how does that sound?”

Finn nodded obediently, and his mother smiled.

“Vegetable supreme,” the guy at the counter called over to them, and when Finn looked up, he was looking straight at him. Finn leapt from his seat, partially from eagerness to escape the current situation and partially from the intensity of the man’s stare, but tore his eyes away the moment a hand touched his shoulder and pushed him gently back into his seat. He acquiesced to his mother’s gesture, and watched her collect the box from the counter as the man continued to stare. Finn started to list reasons why he might be staring: if he’d mentioned it to anyone, they might have pointed out he was missing an arm and that would make almost anyone stare; but it was like the woman the night before- after she’d noticed his arm, she’d looked at him directly and smiled. This was the same as that, only he wasn’t smiling, just looking at him as if expecting him to say or do something spectacular.

He was glad of both the food and the distraction, though still kept an eye on the reflection of the man in the window- thankfully he seemed to lose interest once Finn had turned away. 

The pizza was the greasiest thing he’d ever eaten, and he lived with a very well-fed dog who could cook brilliantly but also wasn’t afraid to make horrifically unhealthy food. Neon orange oil sat on the surface of the cheese in puddles, and the previously mentioned vegetables were sunken far into the topping like the ruins of a long-defunct empire. And yet, he sunk his teeth into it and felt his problems melt away like hot mozzarella for a few blissful seconds. He wasn't sure if it was as good as Pizza Sassy's, but it sure hit the spot.

“Finn,” his mother began. Terrible as it was, he wished she wouldn’t- he was hungry and all he wanted to do was think about the pizza currently trailing a string of cheese from his mouth. “When we first moved here, to London, things were hard. I don’t know if you remember that,” she sighed, “I wish you did.”

“I can’t help it,” he pointed out, somewhat irritated.

“I guess. You weren’t too old anyway I suppose- how old are you, that was… six years ago? I don’t know. Anyway, maybe you don’t remember but breaking up with your father was messy, and on top of it, you hated that you’d left all your friends back in Cali and I hated my new job. Plus, this place is very different to the beach,” she sighed, and at least on that, Finn could agree. 

He chewed on his pizza thoughtfully now, initial hunger satisfied in the first gargantuan slice.

“You were great though Finn. Me and your dad had a fight like we did most weekends, only instead of me following him, you stopped me and we went out for a walk to the park and fed the ducks. And then when we moved and your father and I split up, you left post-its notes round the house to cheer me up.”

She stopped there momentarily, and Finn wasn’t sure what to say. Besides the fact he wasn’t sure he quite understood a few words she’d used (Inkily? In Kali?), he felt uncomfortable taking credit for doing such a thing, even though in theory at least, he’d done it. Even then, where was this point going? 

“You don’t remember that, do you?” she sighed, and Finn barely needed to shake his head to elicit an air of stale disappointment about his mother. “I should’ve known. Point is, this is like that. It’s a fresh start, and we’re here for each other, right?”

If saying that to him was why they’d come out, Finn thought, it was a little lacklustre. He hated himself for being so cynical- had he somehow become a worse person in this world? He didn’t remember being so quick to throw off people like he was doing, but then, everyone in Ooo seemed much more genuine than here. Everyone except Martin. Maybe that was it, he mused- it was being human that made you contrived. 

“So are you going to give school a try?” she asked, straightening up on her seat a little as if to regain an unnecessary air of superiority. Finn shrugged.

“I guess,” he said. Her eyes scanned his face, as if looking for some particular reaction, but since Finn had his own reasons to be split down the middle about going to school, he didn’t suppose his face displayed any emotion in particular. Or, if it did, she’d have misconstrued it- after all, she wouldn’t have listed the possibility of finding Jake or at least someone who knew Finn Mertens under the positives of going to school in a million years. She was nervous for what people would think about his arm though- that he could see, by the way her gaze slipped from his face to his shoulder and then down to where his elbow should have been. They had that in common too, he supposed.

They ate the rest of the meal in relative silence- or rather, Finn’s mother picked half-heartedly at the pizza, leaving Finn to eat most of it quite gladly. It was only once he’d finished that he regretted it one two counts: not only did he notice his mother had barely touched her food, and wondered if he should have made more of an effort to gratify her points of conversation, but also he felt that sweaty, rubbery cheese settling in his stomach, and he began to feel hot under his sweater. 

It was therefore that Finn was glad to leave. That, and once his attention had been torn from both his mother and the remaining lukewarm crusts of vegetable supreme, he became again aware of the burning stare of the man at the desk- or perhaps boy, Finn came to wonder, as he only seemed to look old when Finn considered him within the parameters of a cashier, whereas once his mind stumbled over his memories to work out if he’d seen him before and pasting his face on the many blank faces in his recent memory, he didn’t seem much older than Finn himself. Maybe Finnick knew him, Finn wondered. He wanted to know but didn’t want to ask, and more pressingly wanted to leave and never come back. That and as they were eating, the shop filled up with more people- only one or two at a time at first, not looking round as they picked up an order and left, but slowly those ones and twos became anomalies that hung about: leaning on the counter, waiting in a chair for an overdue order, calling their partner in from smoking outside the door and kissing loudly while talking a language Finn didn’t recognise. And of course, there were stares for the one-armed, slightly androgynous teenager picking at pizza crusts in the corner of the room. 

Lucky Finn.

He was glad to leave for other reasons- the refreshing kiss of a crisp night-time breeze, a chance to stretch his legs and a chance to escape the face-to-face confrontation with his mother- but this would be far from the last time Finn would be almost overwhelmed by the unwanted gaze of strangers.

They walked in silence for a while. Finn listened to his own breath while brooding over the things he’d noticed in the pizza place, before his sense of logic told him to stop replaying the whole thing over and over in his head and he tried to clear his mind of it all. He focused on his breathing. In, out, in, out. It was faster than he was used to it being- maybe he was panicking, or maybe, based on how much he’d slept and how easily tired he felt since he’d woken up in hospital, his body was just having a hard time adjusting to waking life, and he was understandably unfit. 

He managed to slow it a little, meaning he owed some of his heavy breathing to the sense of unease brought about by being the temporary fixation of strangers, and looked up to see his mother looking back uneasily at him, as if he’d grown an extra head. He was just about to smile and ask her if she was OK when he tripped.

It was a feeling that was indescribable. His mother told him that all that physically happened was that he tripped over thin air, gave a sort of gasp, and looked as if he’d seen a ghost. Finn wished it was like that, he wished it was that simple. He definitely tripped, because he remembered doing so, and when he came to his senses, he was being propped up haphazardly on his good side by his mother. However, the moment in which both of his feet left the ground was one of pure, unadulterated horror. 

It was only a split second, but that second seemed to stretch on forever as the quiet suburban night switched to something both more familiar and more gut-wrenching. He knew the face of the Lich anywhere, and here it was, looming in front of him, three times taller than him and twisting and turning as if viewed through a kaleidoscope. For less than a second his world became sickening technicolour, a post-apocalyptic wasteland billowing with toxic clouds in an all too familiar neon green while the giant, deformed embodiment of almost all death and destruction in Finn’s life towered above him. 

What he could see was the least of it. Sure, he wouldn’t forget it in a hurry, but neither would he forget the sudden and involuntary mental weight and feeling of utter doom and concomitant sense of responsibility that, had it have been physical, would have snapped his back like a twig. It was as if he were about to throw up, just the moment before he gagged- he couldn’t breathe, he had no control over his body and he knew something horrible was about to happen. Or as if he were back in space, watching Jake drift away from him and panicking at the vastness of the universe- in fact, that was it: the whole universe had just weighed itself on his shoulders and he was crushed under its weight like a single inconsequential crumb under a great fist of judgement and power. 

And then, just as quickly as it had happened, the parameters of time and space returned to his psyche and the hallucination vanished. He gasped for air and struggled to recontexualise the world around him- his mother, the city lights and the tarmac beneath his feet, none of it made sense within the feeling of the incomprehensible vastness of the universe still fresh in his mind.

“Oh my glob,” he half-shrieked, half-whispered, the words getting stuck in his throat. He clenched his mother’s jacket for comfort. She was there and she was holding him, and even if she wasn’t real or he was going insane, that seemed all that mattered.


	7. Something Somewhere Between Imposter Syndrome and Dysphoria

When they finally got back to the flat, his mother’s first port of call after sitting him down on the sofa with a glass of water was to ring his stepdad. Even if he’d had enough of his senses about him to eavesdrop on the conversation and work out what his mother thought of him right then, he couldn’t; she sat in the other room, leaving Finn alone with his thoughts. 

He wasn’t sure if he was more terrified of what he’d seen or what the vision meant concerning his own mind. Finn’s mum, given she’d not seen the Lich, only her son fall into sudden hysterics, was probably concerned with the latter, and that in itself worried him- he’d not only lost all hope of convincing her to help him work out who he was, but his own case for his own sanity was now almost non-existent. It’d taken her nearly ten minutes to calm him down, in which time he definitely caused a scene- he didn’t remember what he said or did but he remembered everyone in the pizza place, and a few of the other shops, coming outside and watching. And, of course, he remembered the look on his mum’s face when she told him to sit still and wait for her to ask Guoting what they should do: she had been scared of him. Terrified, even. It made him feel sick.

He couldn’t bring himself to say she was wrong anymore. That scared him as much as not knowing whether he was sane or not. Hallucinations or not, if he couldn’t tell his mother she was wrong about him then that meant her version of events remained the only reliable version, which meant all this time, there never really had been a Finn- Finn was only a nickname, a persona created by a confused teenager at the edge of his own mind. And if Finn was only a nickname, then Jake, Bonnibel, Marceline, BMO, Lady and the rest of Ooo were all just a figment of his imagination.

He sighed, dejected. Part of him wanted to cry, but then, he’d cried enough, and crying only gave the impression that he’d lost control more than ever. 

It had all been so real, and that was what was most soul-destroying about the whole experience. He really knew he’d never left the pavement, and yet he couldn’t shake that feeling of the entire universe existing momentarily within the cavity of his chest, suffocating him and draining him of every ounce of hope in his body. Not to mention, of course, every time he now shut his eyes, the towering, grotesque figure of the Lich loomed above him like an inescapable shadow, as if it were physically burned onto his retina.

“Finn…?” came a voice, and his mother was creeping tentatively round to look at him. He wanted to put his head in his hands and block her out, but he only had one hand anyway, plus there was no way she was going to let him escape this. He knew this because he got to his feet, thinking he could feign tiredness, but was firmly sat back down again: his mum did have two hands after all, and now they were clutching his shoulders tightly, as if loosening her grip would mean he would drift away into the night.

She was looking into his eyes, searching for something. He couldn’t stand it and frowned, before looking down at his lap.

“Guoting said we should leave taking you to hospital, but if you think we should go, and you’d feel safer there, then-”

“I’m not crazy. A-At least, I don’t think I am,” Finn insisted, and he hated how childish he sounded.

“No one’s saying you are honey. Finn, why are you so against admitting you have a problem? I’m your mother, you can tell me things and cry and be vulnerable, so why are you trying to tell me you’re fine when you’re not?”

“I…” 

Finn was a confident young man. He knew that, Jake knew that, and everyone who met him would gather as much within a few minutes. He took charge of situations, did his job and knew how to talk to people based on status and win them over just as easily as he could convince Jake to have breakfast for dinner. But he couldn’t feel further from that Finn now- maybe it was because he was alone and unsure of his own mind, or maybe it was because suddenly having a mother made him unconsciously feel the need to become dependent and childish again (he certainly felt that way, being somewhat talked down to), but he couldn’t find the words anymore. 

He thought about telling her he wasn’t telling her what was going on in his head because he didn’t know her, but he knew that was only half of it. That, and she clearly was never going to be convinced by that story until the day he had even a single shred of physical proof that his surname was Mertens, not Merriweather. If he was honest with himself, he didn’t know why he didn’t want to talk about it. He didn’t want to- all his mother needed to do was let it slide and he could go back to playing the role of a good son, as he’d been trying so hard to do before the whole façade came crashing down on his head.

“Oh Finn,” she said, after a minute of silence like this where Finn struggled to put words in his own mouth. She ran her fingers through her hair again, and he rubbed his arm awkwardly. He fingers got stuck in tangles and she sighed.

“We should get your hair cut.”

“I kinda like it long,” he protested, and to his surprise, she smiled.

“OK,” she agreed, “Unless the school has a problem with it,” she continued, and he pulled a face. Then an idea popped into his head.

“Can you plait?” he asked.

“Of course,” she smiled, though he could tell she was a little taken aback, “I was a little girl once.” It took a few seconds before she computed what he was requesting, and then she looked even more surprised, but didn’t question it, instead gesturing him to sit on the floor while she took her seat. Judging on Finnick’s wardrobe, he probably didn’t ask his mum to plait his hair, but then maybe it was all the better that Finn was separating himself from him.

They sat like that for a while, Finn enjoying his mum combing his hair through with her fingers for a substantial amount of time before actually getting to separating his hair up to French braid it. Jake plaited his hair sometimes- normally only after he washed it, which he supposed was on purpose. BMO helped too normally, because the length of his hair tended to be a two-man job anyway, though of course, BMO was all too happy to help. One time they’d been too enthusiastic and put flowers in his hair, which was nice, he supposed, but he didn’t want to keep them there because he was scared one or two would get missed and die in his hair, and he’d find a gross rotting flower a week or so later when he next washed his hair. However, once they’d gotten the flowers out, Jake suggested putting a weapon in his hair. They tried tiny knives, but couldn’t get them to stay and the braid itself wasn’t heavy enough to gather enough momentum to make the tiny knives controllable, so they used a small but still very destructive mace instead, and made a few holes in the wall. It hurt a little but was far too cool not to carry on regardless, though of course, once he and Jake had finished laughing, a fistbump and a nod was all they needed to know it wouldn’t be practical for actual fights. Still, the memory made Finn smile, and he realised he’d zoned out for a few minutes, soothed from his worries by having his hair combed.

Thinking of Jake and BMO, he sighed.

“Don’t be mad, but I still don’t know whether I’m really actually your son. I mean, you’re super nice and cool and it’s rad that you’re braiding my hair for me since it’s kind of impossible with only one arm,” he chuckled, but it came out sounding a little empty as he felt his mother’s anticipation brewing just above his head, “But I still don’t really know who you are. And, y’know, maybe I really am your son and I just gotta un-gunk my brain and stuff but… At the moment, I can’t just go and forget all the junk I already got clunking around up in my head.” 

There was a tense moment, and then Finn got an answer that he really wasn’t expecting.

“I know, Finn. Sure, it’s hard for me to think you don’t know who I am, but I have to admit, you’ve changed a lot since you woke up. I mean, you’re still my son but you’ve got a lot going on in that head of yours and I know you need some time.” She exhaled. “I know I don’t want to hear it but me and you have gotta keep talking about things like this- after all, it’ll help you remember faster, or if you like, help me understand who you are. Like getting to know each other again,” she suggested, and Finn liked the sound of that. He knew she still didn’t really believe he was who he said he was; but then she wasn’t going to any time soon, so a mutual understanding like this really was the best they could come up with. 

“So tell me what’s going on in your head.”

“What do you mean?”

“Like, who’s Jake for a start.” 

Finn’s heart skipped a beat, and slowly, a warm feeling began to spread across his chest. 

She may not be about to believe him any time soon, but she really meant what she said about getting to know each other. Plus at least this was an outlet- something to ease his worries with, make him feel like he wasn’t insane, keep him occupied and remembering who he really was.

\----

Going to bed was almost a disappointment. They’d talked until late- not too late, since his mum had to go to work in the morning, but late enough for them to fall asleep on the couch and be woken a few hours later by Guoting, who lead them both in the direction of their bedrooms. Finn’s bed was cold compared to his spot by the side of the couch, but at least he didn’t have any nightmares. In fact, he slept a dreamless sleep, an all-enveloping blackness and such a complete lack of either consciousness or unconsciousness that Finn had to take a few minutes to reconsider his existence when he awoke the next morning.

He spent the morning in relative silence. He felt better for getting up earlier and indeed going out, but the events of the previous night still rung fresh in his mind. That and his mother had left a few things out for him on the surface in the kitchen, where her note had been the previous day. Things that perplexed him and worried him, as well as intrigued him in equal measure.

For starters, there was another note. It was much longer than the previous day’s, and not only covered what each item was about in simple terms, but talked about the time they’d spent talking with mild fondness. Finn smiled, but his contentment was short-lived.

The first items Finn had seen before. In fact, they were some of the first things he’d seen in his existence as Finnick, supposing that existence had started only a few days earlier (or probably longer, considering how much he slipped in and out of consciousness before actually waking up). They were the two boxes of medicine- the note said they were pain meds and anti-depressants. He frowned, opening one of the boxes without any hesitation besides the extra effort it took to undo the flap of the box one-handed, and drained half a glass of water to get the appropriate dosage into his system without second thought. 

The second box he would come back to.

The next item on the surface was his mobile. Or rather, Finnick’s mobile. This was the item that most intrigued him, not least for its modernity- it was just a block with three buttons at the bottom that didn’t seem to indicate much, including how he should go about turning it on. He pocketed it, resolving to also come back to it, though easily with much more enthusiasm than for the box of medicine.

The third thing on the surface was a small pile of unopened envelopes. There must have been about twenty or so, and one of them was nearly four times the size of the others, sat at the bottom of the pile. He slid this one out, with his mouth a little wide, though was disappointed to find it was addressed to “Finnick”. He really hoped when he got to school, or met anyone else who knew him, he wasn’t known as Finnick, because he wasn’t sure how well he’d be able to handle that. It wasn’t that Finnick was a bad name (though he had to say, he preferred Finn anyway) or that people calling him Finnick would mess with his sense of self, it just didn’t fit- it made him feel strangely guilty, even though he wasn’t sure anymore if there was a Finnick out there that he was replacing. 

“This still feels messed-up,” he muttered, and rather ungracefully wedged the envelope between his stubby arm and his chest, and using his remaining hand to slip a finger under the flap of the envelope and rip it open. Getting the card inside out was also a challenge, and he ended up ripping the envelope all the way round in frustration. 

Neatness was not for people with only one hand at their disposal, he resolved, sliding his back down the work surface to sit on the cool linoleum, and sweeping the shreds of dark greyish-brown paper into a pile with his foot.

The card was big because it’d been signed by a lot of people. Finn supposed that made sense, but he’d still hoped a little Finnick might have a girlfriend. Wishful thinking maybe, for someone who’d jumped in front of a train. Then again, really quite a lot of people had signed this card, so he didn’t seem unliked. 

Reading through the names, Finn began to worry that he’d missed something- if Finnick was well-liked, talented and had a supportive family, then what made him want to give all that up? Finn would almost say Finnick had more going for him than Finn did, but then maybe these things couldn’t be measured like that. 

There were some nice things written in the card, as well as just names. “ _Get well soon!_ ” was popular, especially with someone called Jojo, who had added a little drawing of someone it took a few moments to recognise as himself with short hair in bed with a thermometer sticking out of his mouth, while someone he supposed was Jojo attended his bedside with a comical smile. That was cute, he thought. Then there was “ _We miss you_ ” and “ _Hope you’re OK!_ ” and “ _You’re really cool, you don’t deserve this_ ”. Wendy had written, “ _You mean a lot to us Finn, what’s happened is sad but we hope you recover well and we’ll be by your side when you come back to school xxx_ ”. A “Jack” caught his eye calling him “ _bro_ ” for a moment, but he shrugged it off, though not forgetting deep down what his was hoping to find.

He spent most of the morning reading these cards. The guilt of it all didn’t ebb. He began to feel as if by reading them, he was actively doing wrong; like reading his mail was the final straw to stepping entirely into Finnick’s identity. Then again, it helped, in a weird way. Finn got a better idea of who his doppelganger was, and wasn’t surprised to find he was much like Finn, only Finn wasn’t sad enough to jump in front of a train. All the same, the things they said and the way they said it touched Finn- not Finnick, but Finn Mertens, the boy sat on the kitchen floor of a flat he didn’t belong in, opening cards with one hand and wondering if he could find his friends’ names among the dozens of names he didn’t recognise. The boy reading intensely personal messages from people he didn’t know to someone he wasn’t sure if he knew or not. The boy whose life had gone to having a dog, a vampire, a computer and a sentient piece of gum as supportive friends and guardians, to being almost alone.

There was one on a sheet of ruled paper in a scrawly-marked envelope which had, given from the address and the stamp, been posted instead of given to his mother personally. 

“ _Finn,_

_Right now you’re in hospital and have been for a while. They sent round a card in class and I signed it even though I didn’t really feel like it, so I thought, since you might see that, I should write something longer too. So here goes nothing._

_I’m sorry. In all the ways a human being can be sorry. Mostly I’m sorry I wasn’t there for you as a friend, and that I didn’t notice you were having a hard time. If you can forgive me, then I’m always here for you to talk to and I hope we can still be friends, if you ever get out of hospital. I’m down to have some fun when you do too, I bet it sucks being in bed on a ward all day and I really miss hanging out with you dude!_

_You haven’t missed much at school except maybe the work, which is really hard this year. Everyone got a C on the first English paper of the year and Shunaid cried, which kind of sums up the whole schoolwork thing. Otherwise it’s been super quiet without you, it’s not quite the same without my main man, y’know?_

_Wake up soon!_

_Tommy”_

Finn sighed.

“Man,” he mumbled, his voice croaky, “This guy’s gonna be expecting me to know all our backstory and all that blizz when I don’t even know what’s up in my own noodle.” That said, he guessed it was sweet of this Tommy to send such a caring sounding letter, but of course, there was no alleviating Finn’s sense of guilt.

He flicked through the rest of the letters and cards half-heartedly, scanning some, mostly trying to remember the names. He had a feeling he’d feel the need to learn the main one’s- the people who had written longer and more heartfelt things- though he had no idea how he was to match them to faces.

After a while, even though not finished, he decided he couldn’t take it anymore and picked himself up off the floor. Getting up was more difficult than getting down, as he momentarily forgot he only had one arm at his disposal and so couldn’t reach for the counter as his knees clicked. He definitely wasn’t as fit as he’d been in Ooo, and he wasn’t sure whether that was just because he’d been in bed for however many months it was, or because he’d never been in Ooo at all.

“Man!” he exclaimed, and shook his head violently like Jake did after they’d been swimming. He shouldn’t question himself like that. It wasn’t going to get him anywhere.

Leaving the notes on the side, he went to take a shower, hoping the water would clear his head and help him think about how he was going to tackle school and Finnick’s friends from an objective angle. In reality, all it made him do was brood. It also made him remember how incredibly frustrating it was missing his favourite arm: hot water got into the scar he kept forgetting was at the end of that nasty stub and he cried a bit at the pain. 

He didn’t cry that long, but his eyes were red and puffy when he got out of the shower. Maybe it was the hot water. The plait his mum had done the night before was also ruined, which he’d not considered until it was too late.

He stared into the mirror for a minute or so, not really seeing his reflection, but not really lost in any kind of thought either. He just needed to stand in a humid bathroom and space out.

Then he sighed, a long, onerous kind of sigh, and blinked his eyes back into focus. To his surprise, he realised, for the first time in what felt like forever, he felt… better. Not perfect, indeed far from it, but better.


	8. Replacement

It wasn’t that he had any better idea of who he was, or what his situation was, or how he should feel about it all. Sometimes, feelings were abstracted from the situation: like being excited in a scary dungeon, or apathetic at the idea of a picnic on the roof of the treehouse. Not everything made sense always- if the world was always defined by logic and nothing but the flow from cause to effect, it would be boring. Emotions, Finn should know, were one of the more complicated things in the world too. This was just one of those times.

It was almost warm under the direct gaze of the winter sun, as if spring were only round the corner. He avoided another jumper, opting instead for a hat and scarf set he found in his bottom drawer. The hat sure wasn’t the one he knew and loved, but it was comforting to have something over his head, even if it did only reach just over his ears. His still damp hair spilled out of the hat like a golden waterfall, glistening in the sunlight as he stepped out onto the steps in front of the block of flats.

His mum had left a list of things to buy on the side under the other note, as well as an ad hoc map and a reusable bag. She’d also left some money- an amount Finn didn’t think was even remotely enough. It wasn’t a currency he was used to though, so maybe the exchange rate was different, or at least he certainly hoped so.

It was unexpectedly nerve-wracking being out on his own in a place he didn’t recognise. He supposed it wasn’t an unhealthy reaction, just one he was far from used to. After all, he knew Ooo better than the back of his hand, including a handful of trapdoors and secret passages leading in and out of the Candy Kingdom that he was sure PB didn’t know about. Except, wherever he was, it wasn't Ooo, so there really were no rules of the land he could relate to in a way he could traversing somehwere even as foreboding as the Badlands. 

Wherever he was, it was dirty. It was as if everything had got dusty long ago and the dust had simply become part of the landscape, homogenising everything to the same shade of grey. The only splashes of colour were the scrawls on walls and garage doors that Finn couldn’t quite decipher, and the glint of the cars lined up neatly along the side of the road. He followed them along the street, and they never ended- there were far more cars than people, he felt. In fact, the only person he’d seen round was the woman with the spicy soup from the night before.

After a few minutes, wherein he’d found his bearings and could now follow the simple enough route, he remembered the phone and fished it out of his pocket. It really was very sleek, and he gazed at it a long time, stuffing the map in his pocket so he could turn it over in his palm to admire it. It was then he noticed three buttons on the side, in addition to the ones on the front, and he pressed them a few times to no avail. He then held down them all individually. On the third button, the phone gave a little buzz that startled Finn, and the screen sprang to life in a flurry of colours.

“Woah,” he mumbled involuntarily. It was really high definition, and it crossed his mind that if he ever found his way back to Ooo, he wanted to take this with him; not because he particularly wanted to keep the phone (he was quite attached to his own phone, wherever it was) but he thought BMO would be astounded by the screen quality. Who knew, maybe there was a way of fitting BMO with a similar screen. The thought of HD BMO was somewhat endearing, as well as it being an incredible prospect for video games, he thought, and grinned to himself.

It took a few seconds for the phone to boot up, and once it had, he barely got to take in the start screen before his phone almost exploded with messages- 32 in total. Most of them were from names he recognised, and he was pleased to find most of them had pictures attached to the contact, though the pictures varied in helpfulness, since some were of drawings. He flicked through them, but already emotionally exhausted from reading letters all morning, he closed the window, vowing to read them later.

His first thought was to go to Finnick’s photos. The middle button took him to a main menu, and from there, everything was very cleanly laid out and easily navigable, even for a boy who’s phone was a repurposed radio.

Disappointingly, there weren’t many pictures of people. In fact, there were so few, Finn couldn’t help but wonder where the contact photos were from. Instead, there were multiple photos of paintings- often four or five of the same painting, as if Finnick was trying to get a good shot. Then there were some that didn’t make any sense: a table full of half empty bottles, a rainy version of the street he had just left, some kind of partially obscured photo of a fast food restaurant and a dark train platform. 

Eventually he came across something different- one that was of someone, someone familiar. He stopped dead, and squinted at the phone in the sunlight just to make sure- it was him. Recognisably so- not like now where he wasn’t particularly used to his own reflection because of how off he looked from his normal self, but definitely, _definitely_ him. Chubbier, with two arms, and pulling that one smile that he had never actively practiced yet still seemed to be the same one in every photo ever taken of him (save the candids). He was with his mother, who looked the same only less pregnant, sat in late evening sun in some kind of grassy area. The composition was set-up, but all the same, they looked happy. He checked the date- it had been taken on 5th April 2019, with the last photos being taken on 28th May 2019. 

Wait, he thought. 2019?

His stomach dropped, and to solidify his fears, he hit the home screen.

There, in white at the top of the display, was the date: 15th January 2020.

This meant he’d somehow travelled over 1000 years into the past. Everything around him was pre-Mushroom War Ooo. 

Part of him wanted very badly to panic. His heart was racing, a strange mix of relief and horror pulsing through his veins, and he found himself shaking. Although betrayed by his body, however, the rational part of him was somewhat elated. He finally knew where he was. knew where he was- or rather, when. And although it wasn’t as if finding this out had changed anything in physicality, he had a lead, an aim, a sense of purpose. Ooo wasn’t a dream. He wasn’t insane and he was definitely Finn Mertens; though how he’d fallen into the role of Finnick when he’d only travelled through time was perplexing. 

Maybe the original Finnick really was in danger, he thought. He imagined him again, the guy who didn’t look unlike him, clearer in his mind’s eye this time, maybe gagged or something. But then, he thought, how was he to find the original Finnick, let alone his friends?

The answer hit him even before he’d finished the thought. Finnick had, seven months ago, attempted suicide, been hospitalised and woken up as Finn. Supposing there were two of them, then a physical switch between the two boys would have had to have taken place. It couldn’t have been done while they were hooked up to a billion machines in the hospital, under constant surveillance from nurses, doctors and his worrisome mother, which meant it was done beforehand. Except, Finn had no memories of the beforehand, just Ooo, with everything getting mixed up and obscured into a dreamlike status towards the end.

Finn looked down at the phone, and then at his right arm.

Finnick hadn’t just attempted suicide. Finnick had committed suicide. And somehow, Finn from the future was just to slide effortlessly into the life of a boy whose own mother didn’t know her son had died seven months ago.

And with that, he leant into a nearby bin and threw up.


	9. In the Search For Identity Pt 1

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> guysssss look!!! at the amazing amazing thing by the one and only tumblr user tropicoola: http://tropicoola.tumblr.com/post/142553958895/some-art-for-eva-chi-and-their-fanfic
> 
> i lie awake at night thinking about sarah's colouring ahhhhhh. i also lie awake at night thinking about what a giant piece of shit i am for not updating this for like. months. 
> 
> [shameless self-plug tho but if u like that angsty finn feel then there's a cool oneshot on my profile u might like wooo]

What came up was mostly just bile. Not that that tasted any better; in fact, it tasted much worse, and he spat a lot trying to get the taste out of his mouth. He stood over the bin for a while, both unwilling and unable to move, looking at where the phone had fallen onto the ground, propped up face up against some thick tufts of grass sprouting from between the concrete. After a few minutes, the screen switched itself off, and Finn exhaled a long sigh of relief he didn’t know he’d been holding in.

Maybe he was overreacting. His body sure was, he thought, grimacing and spitting again. There was no proof of any of his assumptions- there might not even be a separate Finnick, Finnick’s life could be some kind of construction of bent space-time or something. After all, the boy in the photos on Finnick’s phone definitely could be Finn. Or maybe…

It was no use. Excuses for his existence just made the guilt that had been mounting all that morning- or even since he’d woken up in hospital- so much worse. His deal was that he wanted to help people, not mess up their lives, not replace people’s children and play some pathetic kid who couldn’t go anywhere without hallucinating or throwing up or whatever.

He wished Jake was there. He wished he knew where Jake was. Jake had his faults and he wasn’t always there when Finn needed him, but right there in that moment, Finn was dead sure that if his brother were there, the situation would have been instantly improved tenfold.

Eventually, he picked himself up and retrieved the phone from the ground. It was scraped a little on the corner, but he wasn’t sure he cared. He thought about turning it off, just for now, for peace of mind, but doing so would once again have him fumbling with buttons one-handed and probably meant he would have to look at the date again, so instead in denial, he slipped the phone into his pocket.

“What’s wrong with you Finn?” he asked himself, staring down at his shoes. Then, after humming under his breath for a few seconds, he exhaled. “So Jake isn’t here and you’re stuck in the past, maybe jacking someone’s actual being and stuff. Though I didn’t mean it. But yeah. You’re Finn Mertens, for definite this time… I mean, probably?” 

He paused. “You’re Finn.” That he could be sure of. Sure, the Mertens bit was important to him, he wasn’t sure why; but the Merriweathers weren’t bad either. “You’re Finn and you can do this.”

Indeed, the mixture of teen stubbornness, a can-do attitude and good dose of hope was always what had kept Finn going, and hallucinations and identity crisis aside, this was no exception. He brushed himself down, spat one last mouthful of bile into the bin (Jake would have hated him doing that but it tasted gross otherwise) and continued on his way.

Walking round the supermarket was a bit unnerving. Perhaps not unnerving, as Finn felt maybe his problem here was that he lacked nerves, or indeed any kind of feeling- he felt a little spaced out, as if he wasn’t there at all. All the people around him would be dead soon. Somehow, the fact they were staring didn’t matter. He extracted the list from his pocket and concentrated all his energy on that, clasping it between index and thumb while the other three fingers hooked around the basket he picked up at the entrance.

After a while though, he began to relax. There were very few people at the back of the supermarket by the freezers, so he lurked there, relishing the neon glow of the door lights and letting the hum of the refrigerator units fill his mind. 

They did neat flavours of ice cream in 2020. He had an urge to try Blueberry Cheesecake, but it was pretty pricey and the experience wouldn’t be the same without Jake.

His mind wandered from ice cream to Simon. Simon would be alive, Finn thought. What a slowly maddening man could do to help a teen boy with an identity crisis Finn wasn’t sure, but he supposed it was a mildly comforting thought: some link from this world to his, even if there was a 1000 years and an apocalypse between the two. 

A nice thought would all it would have to be, Finn concluded; after all, he wasn’t sure where in the world Simon was originally from. Come to think of it, he didn’t even know what year the Great Mushroom War was in, so maybe it wasn’t for another 30 years and Simon was only his age right that moment. He chuckled. That sure would be a sight, Finn thought. 

As he was wandering towards the checkout with what he hoped were the items his mum wanted, he spotted a stray jar of pickles on the end of an aisle and his eyes widened at the thought of Prismo. It barely took him longer than a split second to throw them in the basket. He wasn’t sure how he’d justify it to his mother, nor was he sure he could totally remember the ritual, but he’d have to remember, somehow. 

His eyes went misty as he looked down at the basket hooked over his only arm, the few items his mother requested rattling around and settling on one side when he was stood still, unbalancing the basket and making it harder to lug to the checkout.

He found it hard to believe he once tried to convince himself he was over losing his arm. It’d been the first time it had happened, and a month or so after it’d been ripped off he felt for some reason that telling himself he was fine with being permanently disabled would fix most of the problem. After all, once he’d gotten the hang of it and realised prostheses weren’t the answer (at least, not for him) the physicality of it wasn’t that bad. Finn hadn’t realised at the time that not allowing himself to feel bad about it had made things worse in the long run. Melon hearts were still part of your body. They needed time to heal as much as his arm did.

Of course, this realisation that he was allowed to feel bad didn’t change much since Finn was still stubborn and prone to hiding things. It also didn’t make him feel better when the cashier couldn’t seem to take her eye off his arm, or lack thereof. Finn found himself frowning, even though he knew she probably didn’t mean it. Some things were newer to some people than to others, he told himself, before bitterly retorting that he sure wasn’t new to the concept of missing an arm. When he did that, he became aware of his lip twisting and the cashier noticing, giving what he took to be an apologetic smile.

She did help him pack though. She also didn’t say much, both aloud and with her eyes (besides the looking), which he liked. Not like the pizza guy.

On the way back, he was glad to later reflect that his mind had wandered from his arm and returned to way of getting back to his time. Prismo seemed like the best bet, but maybe it wasn’t the end of the world if Prismo couldn’t help him, since after all his hallucination- or whatever it was- seemed to allude to the Lich being part of this. He bit his lip. He wasn’t sure what the Lich would gain from putting him here though, except maybe isolating him and making him miserable, plus he guessed, he’d eventually get blown up in the Mushroom War.

“I dunno,” he said down to his plastic bag full of groceries, “He’s the wrong kind of evil. Not super-smarts evil sneaky-like, not really, y’know? Just plain old evil.” 

His bag, in reply, split, and its contents split out onto the dusty pavement.

“What the flip!” he yelled, probably too loudly. He couldn’t deal with this, trying to see the good side and things going wrong. The bag of apples he’d bought had split too, and one went rolling down beside him and fell into the road, before coming to rest in a ditch. He grappled around, flushed even though there was no-one around to see his embarrassment. He couldn’t see where the split had come from- there was nothing sharp in the bag, especially not sharp enough to have cut through the apple bag as well. 

He huffed. He took a few seconds gathering everything up, but on his knees he had little balance for reaching and only one hand meant he couldn’t prop himself up and collect food items at the same time, and eventually something inside him snapped and he stopped, leaning back.

He was pretty sure the worst part was the uselessness. Sure, the physical experience of not having an arm or the dread and horror from his hallucination were awful, and not having Jake or really anyone who knew who he really was around was painful, but the worst bit had to be knowing all that and living it and not being able to change a thing. 

Then he looked up. Once down the road from whence he’d come, and the other way, where he was pretty sure was retracing his steps back to the flat, and then he blinked and looked up. And there it was.

It was very underwhelming, but then again so was a jar of pickles. That’d be why he’d not noticed it. The phone booth was grotty and smelt of a cross between urine and something sweet, a little like rosemary or fresh-cut grass, that pricked the back of his throat. One of the windows was shattered. The inside was collaged with phone numbers offering services for things Finn avoided looking at for too long, but ultimately, there was a phone and, more importantly, a directory.

The idea must have been in his mind before he saw the box because he was sure the box itself could never have inspired such an idea: an individual would have to be mad to willingly step inside. Thankfully he was mad, or at least a lot of people would think so. So, he left the shopping where it was and opened the door to the booth, wrinkling his nose at the smell before stepping inside, leaving the door open behind him.

The directory may have been bolted down and the tray it lay on badly cracked, but besides a few pages missing it was intact. Hundreds, maybe thousands of pages of phone numbers- names and phone numbers. He looked at the open page so long the letters started to contort and not really look all that real, before he pulled himself together and ripped through the book as fast as he could with only one hand to “D”. Of course, he found nothing under “Dog”. He’d not even seen any dogs around. He tried “T” anyway, but to no avail. Then “B”; then “P”, where he found only two people called “Petrikos” and not “Petrikov”. 

Maybe this was a stupid idea, he thought, beginning to sweat a little under his hat. He had stared at one page too long and now the letter “P” didn’t look quite right anymore, and numbers clouded up his vision. Who else could he think of? 

He flipped the pages idly side-to-side, before flicking to “A” for Abadeer. There was no-one there, but he guessed, maybe if things got really bad, he could always take a trip to the Nightosphere. He wasn’t sure how time worked down there though. Hunson was probably alive (or whatever it was that described his state of existence) but Finn had a funny feeling he experienced time linear. If he didn’t, Finn thought he’d probably have un-gunked Marceline’s vampirism. Maybe. He wasn’t really sure about Marcey’s past or anything- it’d taken him long enough (and a pointer from Jake) to work out she and Peebles were an on-again, off-again thing- as in the same way he and FP were once a thing. Probably with just as many problems, he thought, frowning.

He leant too hard on the phone book then, and the little plastic shelf it was sitting on gave a little crack. Finn, understandably a little disposed to be nervous at that point, jumped a little. Behind him, his plastic bag rustled with a gust of wind. He should probably get going.

One last shot, though, he thought, and flipped tentatively to “M”. There were 8 Merriweathers, any (or even none) of which he or FInnick could have known; but that wasn’t what he was there for.

There were two Mertens. An “L. Mertens”, and, to Finn’s surprise, an “F. Mertens”. 

Of course, there was no way of getting his hopes up. His heart did skip a beat when he saw that name, but he was pretty sure it was just because he rarely, if ever, saw it written down; much less 1000 years from home. He knew his excitement was misguided and that, chances were, neither L. Mertens nor F. Mertens would be able to offer him anything except perhaps a terminated call. And yet, even though he had no idea what he was going to gain from it, now he’d seen that name in print, he couldn’t not call it.

He fished his mobile out of his pocket, and stared at it a while. He didn’t trust it. It probably belonged to a dead person and he couldn’t in that moment envisage ever using it (though it turned out, no matter how grand the gesture, everything sinks in the endless moors of quotidian). And yet, he had to call those numbers. 

He replaced the phone in his pocket and instead extracted the loose change crumpled inside two small leafs of paper: one of them the list his mother had given him.

He was pretty sure regular Finn Mertens would have never have used that spare change to make a call to a stranger. Any amount of change was stealing to him, and besides, he’d long grown out of anything even remotely similar to prank calling after a kind of negative experience with a skeleton-armed wizard one time. But, as ever, Finn wasn’t that guy. He was desperate and lonely and maybe not even “Finn” at all. 

Finn put the change down on the book, and sorted it with one finger into sizes with the numbers face-up for easy access, before sliding the first coin into the slot and picking up the receiver.

A call seemed easier to justify than a jar of pickles.


End file.
